Whistle (32 page)

“You’ve got a lover,” Strange said. “And you’re not going to give him up. Good. Fine. Well, who is this guy?”
Don’t talk about it
, his mind warned him.
If you let her start talking about it, you have lost.

“He’s a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force,” Linda said promptly, as if she had worked her speech all out, “and he’s a wonderful person. He’s a Princeton graduate, and he comes from someplace on Long Island called Southampton.” That would account for all the new sophistication, wouldn’t it?

“And I suppose you want to marry him?” Strange said. He felt tired suddenly, and he wished they would stop playing that damned song. That fucking “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

She did not answer him but went straight on. “He does a lot of design work on airplanes,” she said, instead. As if from her prepared speech. “And he does a lot of work up at Patterson Field. But his main office is here. And anyway, he flies up there and back whenever he wants to or feels like it. He has a plane, at his beck and call. I met him at our plant when he was there looking at some parts that he thought he might use in some design. And so now, he spends more time here than he does up there, because of me. At least, the evenings. The nights.”

“Sure. The evenings,” Strange said. “The nights. But do you want to marry him?”

“He’s six foot two,” Linda went on. “With wide shoulders and a small head, blue eyes, and a long neck. And he’s the greatest gentleman I ever met. And he’s crazy in love with me.”

“Are you going to marry him, God damn it?” Strange shouted, but in a low voice. “You want a divorce. Is that it?”

Linda dropped her eyes demurely, and blushed again. “He can’t marry me,” she said simply. “He would love to. But he’s got a wife and four small children back there in Long Island. And he can’t leave them.”

“Because they got the money,” Strange said grimly.

“Perhaps,” Linda said. “Maybe. But he can’t leave them. And I don’t care. And I’m not going to give him up.”

“But, why?”

“Because he makes me feel things. He makes me feel things I’ve never felt before.”

“What kind of things?”

“Sex things.” She blushed a third time, completely crimson.

“Like what?”

“Lovemaking things,” Linda said, still blushing, still looking away.

“I think I’ll order us another drink,” Strange said tiredly.

“Yes. Please do. I wish you would,” she said. “I don’t like this any better than you do.”

“You must like it some better,” Strange said grimly, “since it’s not you who’s losing anything. Would you mind telling me what kind of lovemaking things?”

She waited till he had signaled the waiter and ordered the new drinks, still blushing furiously, still unwilling to look at him. Only when the waiter went away, was out of hearing range, did she speak.

“He kisses me, down there,” she said, her face bright red. “He makes me come. He’s taught me how to come. To have orgasms. Do you realize I’ve never had an orgasm in my life till I met him?”

“Good God,” Strange said. “Never?”

“Never once. And you’re the first man I ever, uh, went to bed with.”

“Not even once?” Strange said. “I always thought—I guess I never thought about it.”

“I’m not blaming you. But you can see why I’m never going to give him up. I’m going to stay with him. At least until the war’s over.”

“Or they move him someplace else,” Strange said.

“Yes,” she said. “There’s that. Have you ever gone out with any other women than me? I mean since we’re married?”

Strange raised his eyes to stare at her. But she was still looking down, at the table. “No,” he lied.

“Then I’m sorry,” Linda said. “I’m truly sorry for you. But that doesn’t change anything.”

“No.”

“I guess you won’t want to stay married to me. Under the circumstances.”

“No. I guess not.”

Strange was thinking that it would be easy enough to put it all down to some form of retribution. That was what he was feeling. But was that really the truth? After all, he had not gone to bed with that girl Frances at the Peabody until long after Linda had her Air Force lt/col. Of course, he had gone down to the whorehouses that one time in Wahoo with the boys, after she left. And a couple of other times, after he’d brought her out and married her, he’d gone down to the whores on a toot with a bunch of the guys. And sweated blood for two weeks after, afraid he might have picked up a dose of something. But in spite of all of that it wasn’t really retribution. It was just the war.

“Do you kiss him down there, too?” he asked.

“Yes.” She was blushing furiously again. “I’m going to give you all of the money in the account,” she said. “It’s yours. There’s a little over seven thousand now.”

“I don’t want it,” Strange said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Linda said. “Because I’m not going to keep it. If you don’t take it, I’ll give it to daddy. So you better take it.”

“Okay, I’ll take it,” Strange said.

He had suddenly become aware of that damned band again. Now they were playing “How High the Moon,” another song he had heard on the radio in the tropical islands of the Far East. Tokyo Rose had played that one, too.

“You can see why I can’t take it,” Linda said.

Strange had hardly heard her. “Well, anyway, you’ve answered my question for me. You’ve solved my problem for me,” he said, looking up.

“What are you going to do?”

“Why, have that damned second operation. That’s what.”

Linda did not say anything, did not answer him.

“It’s getting really late,” he said. “I suppose we ought to be going.”

“Don’t you want to dance with me? One more time? I’ve learned to really love to dance,” Linda said.

“No, I don’t,” Strange said. “I really don’t.”

From the other side of the table, she reached over her hand and put it over his claw, bound down on its plaster plate. Agitatedly, he pulled his away.

But there was no fight. Back at the house in Covington, up in her little chintzy bedroom, at five a.m. with the dawn just coming up, they more or less amicably went through the various details that had to be arranged, a great deal like two old friendly business partners who for various reasons are splitting up their firm. She arranged for and wrote out a check for him to cash, closing out their mutual bank account. She would start a new one, she said. Then Linda got ready for bed. And Strange started downstairs, to drink some beers with any members of the family who might be just getting up or getting ready to go to bed.

But when he got to the head of the stairs, she called him back. “I’ll sleep with you tonight, anyway,” she said. “If you want.”

“Jesus, no,” Strange said. And then she started to cry.

“Christ, don’t cry,” Strange said. “For God’s sake, don’t cry.”

She didn’t answer.

“Will you tell me one thing,” Strange said. “Did you really like it? When he kissed you, down there?”

She looked up from her crying and, incredibly, went right into a deep crimson blush, as red as a beet. “I loved it. I—I adored it,” she said. “I’ve never had anything feel like that in my life.”

“Well then don’t cry,” Strange said harshly, and pulled the door to, gently. Then he pushed it back open. “Do you realize that all that time, since I’ve been back, when you were sleeping with him, you were screwing me, too?”

“I was your wife,” she said.

Downstairs in the kitchen her older paternal cousin, who had just got up to get ready to go on the day shift, was sitting with Linda’s maternal cousin’s wife, who had only just come home herself after getting off the swing shift. Since they were drinking beer, both of them, Strange joined them. He did not tell them he was leaving. Probably, they would not have cared. Strange wondered briefly why the maternal cousin’s wife was so late getting home from the swing shift, herself.

He was waiting at the bank when they opened the doors, with Linda’s check to cash. He got a certified cashier’s check for $7,140, and put it away in his wallet. Near the bus station he bought another pint of whiskey for the bus trip back, but he was pretty sure he’d have to get another somewhere around Nashville, the way he felt. He sure didn’t have much of a batting average for completing his leaves and passes, he thought as he climbed on the daytime Greyhound.

The certified check in his wallet did not seem to make it feel any heavier, or make him feel any lighter, not the way he felt.

But he knew just what he was going to do with the money when he got back to Luxor.

B
OBBY
P
RELL WAS
in his wheelchair on his ward’s small dayroom porch when Strange came down the ward looking for him. He was playing solitaire. Prell had had his final set of casts off only two days before, and was in no mood to think about anything but himself. But he could tell something had happened to Strange, when he saw him.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“With me? Nothing. Why?”

Prell knew his new buddy well enough to know when something was wrong. Being thrown together in so many hospitals, Prell believed, had given them a strong sense of each other.

At the same time, the final removal of his casts and a good look at his poor lousy crippled legs had given Prell an enormous shock. He had seen them before, during the first time the casts were off, but they had been covered back up quickly in new, safe plaster cocoons so that he was able to put them out of his mind, not think about them. Now he had to think about them. It did not make for any mood of intense optimism.

Withered, was the only word to describe them. From his hips down they were nothing but the skin and the bones. Great flabs of flaking skin hung down from the knitted femurs and the shin-bones. In the middle, his frozen knees were huge red knobs. Thick red welts and ridges of scar tissue crisscrossed both thighs where the .50 cal slugs had hit him. The idea that he might ever walk on them again was a horrible, grotesque joke.

And the pain had started again, immediately the therapy started. It was not as bad as the pain he had had on the train but it was with him all the time, never stopped.

“How’re you, old buddy?” Strange demanded. He gave a mean grin as he sauntered on out onto the glassed-in porch. It was not your normal Johnny Stranger grin. This grin made Prell think of the last time Strange had had to fire a 1st/cook for laziness and malingering.

“Not too bad.” Prell wondered if Strange would notice the casts were gone, and if so, how soon. “You been up to Cincinnati again?”

“Yes. Yes, I have. And I’ve come into a little money.” Strange whipped out his wallet from his bathrobe pocket and pulled out a large-sized bank check. He spread it open before Prell.

“Money?” Prell said.

“Money. And I’m itchin’ to begin spendin’ it.”

Prell whistled when he saw the amount. “Your old lady know about this?” He made himself grin. He was certainly not himself going to tell Strange about the missing casts.

“My old lady is making a fortune up there in them defense plants. She don’t need this.”

“It’s a hell of a lot of money,” Prell made himself say.

“You bet. And I figured it’s about time I started utilizing some of it.” Strange paused, and pushed forward his chest. “You know about that famous suite of rooms those Navy friends of Landers have at the Peabody? Well, I thought I’d get me one of those. For a while. For all of us to use.”

Prell moved his head, in disbelief. This was surely not the Johnny Stranger he knew. Strange had always been the biggest, most notorious miser the old company had had.

“How long before you think you’ll be able to go into town?” Strange said. “I want you in on the opening.” Then for the first time, he looked down and noticed the missing casts. “Hey?” He put his hand gently on one of the horrible, scabby-looking, withered feet. “They’re off? For good? How’s it going?”

“Terrible.” Prell said it without expression or emotion, factually. “I hear they’re giving seven for one on the leg wards that I’ll never walk on them again.”

“They’re wrong,” Strange said. “I think I’ll go pick me up some of that seven-to-one money.”

“I know they’re wrong,” Prell said, in his sturdy, West Virginia way. “They don’t know how tough I am. But I think you better wait two weeks and see, just the same. Besides, the odds’ll go up. To nine or ten.”

“Hey. Listen. There might be a way we could make some money on this,” Strange said.

“You mean betting it?”

“Sure. If you were to wait? If you were to work hard at the therapy? And not show anybody? Not let anybody see the results. Make it look bad. Why, hell. The odds might go as high as twenty to one. I’d lay a lot on that.”

Prell studied him. “And we could let Landers know.” Again, he was struck by how changed Strange seemed. Winch was the one who would have concocted such a scheme.

“What about the other company guys?” Strange said.

“Fuck ’em,” Prell said in a flat voice. “I’ll tell you something, Johnny Stranger. I don’t feel that close to the others. The ones that got here before we did. They don’t really seem like the old company. Besides, the more people you tell about a thing, the more it’s likely to leak out.”

“That’s true,” Strange said. “And I don’t feel that close to them myself, any more. But what about Winch?”

Prell could feel his face get stiff, and flat. His Indian eyes narrowed. Once again, the mere name put in his visual mind that same picture of Winch, standing over him in the bed that day, with his bright eyes and evil grin. Accusing him of letting his squad get shot up because he was medal-hunting.

“I wouldn’t give that son of a bitch nothing,” he said. “I wouldn’t give him floor space in hell.”

“Aw, now,” Strange said. Coldly, Prell watched him shrug.

“Anyway,” Prell said, “I don’t know if what you’re thinking of would work.” Mentioning bringing Winch into it had changed his whole mood. He felt sullen. He didn’t care now whether they did it or not. “Look. It’s going to be a long time. Three months? Maybe the guys you make the bets with will have left the hospital. How you going to collect?”

“We’ll think of some way to secure the money. Put it in sealed envelopes? Leave them with a nurse, or some doctor?”